


The Lioness

by greygerbil



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 23:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1323391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Joanna survived the birth of Tyrion. How does she react to the things that happen before the series and how does her presence change the story?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lioness

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was to write an AU in which Joanna lived and I tried to focus mainly on her relationship with her family, which needs all the help it can get.

“The maester said you should eat.”

“I did eat, Mylord,” Joanna pointed out and countered her husband’s frown with a smile that eventually managed to smooth the creases in his forehead. As she leaned back, the servant girl reached over to take her plate. For the benefit of Tywin as much as herself, she had left nothing but some chicken bones, cleaning even the spicy onion sauce with a piece of bread. As she folded her hands on the table, her bones strained against pale skin.

“The maester also said the worst is over with,” she reminded Tywin.

Her lord husband raised an eyebrow. Always very much aware of the failures of men, the last half year had done little to support his feeble trust in most maesters’ skills. Even through the feverish delirium she had spent the time after Tyrion’s birth in, she had still counted two dozen different chain-wearing men traipsing around her bedchamber at one point or another.

“If mother eats too much, she will look like Aunt Genna,” Cersei pointed out, running slender fingers through her blond curls. Cascading over her shoulder, her hair captured the light of candles and torches, making her glow like Lannister gold. When she caught Joanna’s gentle chastising gaze, Cersei smiled wickedly and even that made her look beautiful.

“Genna is a lot more pleasing to the eyes than a corpse,” Tywin said gruffly, finishing his wine.

With a clatter, a plate met the floor. All eyes turned to Jaime. He’d excused himself to go to the bathchamber and had now evidently returned from somewhere else, accidentally pushing the plate off the table as he deposited a small bundle wrapped in blankets there.

“I thought Tyrion should sit at the table with the rest of us.”

“He is too young for that,” Tywin said icily.

Jaime scrunched up his face, ducking his head, but obviously just rearranging strategies.

“I want to play with him.”

“He is too small for that,” Cersei echoed and Joanna realised Tywin almost might have smiled.

Joanna’s gaze went to her son – her oldest son, she reminded herself, for there were two now. It always made her adore Jaime to see him with his brother on his lap, as innocently, completely, stupidly loving as was his way. The child that had almost killed her and made her barren... well. She was just enough Lannister to know she might have forgiven a girl that seemed to promise she would rival Cersei’s sharp-tongued beauty, a boy that might grow into a fighter to compete with Jaime. This crippled lion cub? It was hard not to feel resentment when you gave so much and gained so little.

But unless someone dropped him in the wrong chamber under the castle, where her husband, so much more powerfully resentful than herself, had banned the babe, it was not likely Tyrion would vanish.

“Mylord, he might not be tall enough to be deemed fit for the table until he is old enough to be wedded,” Joanna joked with a gentle smile. “Let him sit with his brother.”

Tywin narrowed his eyes, but as usual, as it should be, his gold-flecked gaze, hard as iron, that could break through any man’s plastered-on armour failed against the offensive amiability of her smile.

*

“My Jaime is smart.”

The look the maester gave her indicated that there was a comment about sentimental mothers on his tongue.

“Of course, Mylady, I would never suggest otherwise. If you haven’t any further questions, I’ll take my leave…”

Tywin nodded his head and Joanna smiled at his retreating back.

“Sometimes even I think Jaime is beyond hope.”

“You don’t mean that,” Joanna informed her husband as she crossed the width of the room. “I remember a wise man saying that stupid knights have short lives. Jaime is very swift on the field.”

His own words did not seem to sit well with Tywin this time. He closed the book that the distressed maester had shown them as evidence, which had a few scribbled, smudged and rather uncouth comments by her son scrawled in the margins.

“Swift with nothing but that and his words,” Tywin said, wrinkling his nose like he’d smelled something distasteful. “If he’d spent half as much time thinking about his studies as he does about clever japes, then he would already be the smartest man in the Seven Kingdoms. I don’t need another bragging soldier, I need an heir. I wonder if sending him to Crakehall is going to do that boy any good.”

“I am very much in favour of it.”

Tywin looked up, surprised. “You said yourself that Lord Sumner does not have the strongest leading hand. How is he supposed to make Jaime sit down and do anything he doesn’t wish to do?”

“Jaime is obviously not the sort that will ever learn from books. He needs to leave the nest to grow into a man.” She rested her hand on Tywin’s shoulder. “Besides that, it will strengthen the allegiance. You will see it’ll do him good. Just as taking Cersei to court will make her a better woman.”

“Perhaps you are right.” He grasped her fingers and Joanna smiled. She believed her words, mostly, but she would have told him that Sumner Crakehall could teach Jaime to fly if that had been what it took. Just last week, she’d caught Jaime in his sister’s wing of the castle, sneaking barefoot past the guards. If she wanted to try and save her twins, she would need to forcibly rip them apart with more than just the length of the Rock to divide them.

*

Ten years later, Joanna knew she had failed. Starting from the way Jaime had held himself at Cersei’s wedding she knew – because she knew Jaime. The looks he gave his sister at court told her volumes and whenever he glanced at Robert, Jaime’s hand was on his sword and it was certainly not because of an overeagerness to protect the king.

As she left her newborn grandson’s chambers, Joanna took Jaime’s arm and let him escort her down the stairs.

“Walk with me for a bit.”

It was the godswood she led them to, her feet barely rustling on the leaves as her son’s armour was clattering with each step. The Northern gods meant little to her, but she appreciated that they needed no all too chatty septons in their midst.

“Joffrey is quite blond.”

“Yes?”

Jaime sounded bemused, bored. A man forced to react courteously to an aging woman’s chattering.

“Unusual for kids with dark-haired parents, I have seen.”

“I don’t pay that much attention to babes,” Jaime said nonchalantly. “They become interesting once they are old enough to hold a sword.” With a shrug, he circled a fallen tree trunk. “Cersei did not let me hold him, so I wouldn’t know.”

Yes, there was certainly a bit of sullenness there. In silence, Joanna thanked her daughter for that bit of straight thinking that Cersei’s twin never seemed to be able to do. Joanna shook her head at him. No point in being subtle now.

“I can’t stop this, can I?”

“Does it bother you that much? The Targaryen were no different.”

“Yes, and they certainly are a thriving dynasty now,” Joanna said. “It is unnatural, but more importantly, my son, it is dangerous for you.”

The knight gave a shrug. “We are careful.” A flash of a grin. “We managed to get around you, mother.”

It was hard to dislike Jaime even for his strange desires and the impending doom this could bring to their family. He was her first son and Joanna secretly liked him for being the most loving of her children. There was something so uncalculated and true about the affection he held for Cersei and the attachment he had to Tyrion as well. One spelled desaster, the second was useless to a knight, yet the gods themselves would not have been able to change Jaime’s mind.

He was a man that could lift his sword against the king he swore to protect, but he was also the one who’d be standing as helpless as a babe before the woman that he loved. Perhaps he was a little bit like his father after all, Joanna reflected with a fondness for both men.

“There are more ears here than at the Rock. Jaime, if I cannot talk you out of this, then at least do this: Keep my daughter safe for me.”

Jaime cocked his head. “You know I always do.”

“Then stay away when you can. You are the greatest danger that there is to her.”

Jaime smiled, but it looked a little less cocky. She figured this was the best she could hope for right now.

 

*

Cersei was better at hiding, but then again, Joanna was her mother.

“Robert is an oaf and will not let go of the memory of that Stark girl. The way he talks about her, you would think she is the Maiden herself,” Cersei complained after she had dismissed the servant from her quarters.

“That might be, but sweetling, let us not pretend that you went into this marriage with no one else on your mind.”

To Joanna’s satisfaction, Cersei never even flinched, which might at some point go a long way to protect her life. Evenly, Cersei lifted the goblet from the table and took a look at the red Arbor liquid as if she was assessing its quality.

“Does father think the same way?”

“Your Lord Father has other things to worry about.”

Now Cersei shot her a look of mild surprise, but Joanna just gave her a smile, not letting on whether it had been mercy or calculation that she’d never told her husband. She loved her daughter, but this was a sword Joanna would need to keep over her head to counteract her foolishness. Tywin was a good man, but he was unforgiving. Tyrion had never been able to make up for his fault of having been born crippled and almost killing Joanna in the process. If Tywin knew the truth about the all too blond boy that she had seen in Cersei’s arms this morning, the twins would feel it. Maybe not today, maybe not in the next decade, but they would.

“Where is the King?” Joanna asked, sipping at her own wine.

“Out hunting.” She sneered. “Besides that and sleeping with whores, there is not much he is proficient at. Certainly not reigning the lands.”

“You tell me this, yet you let Jon Arryn run the council?”

Cersei’s head snapped up, green eyes lit like wildfire.

“It’s not like I choose to. What do you want me to do? He is not like father who worships the ground you walk on! Robert does not listen to me.”

“If Robert does not participate, then its not Robert’s ear you need.”

“And what am I to the other council members? Just a woman.” Cersei waved her hand, dismissively. “I am brighter than half of them, yet I have breasts, so they won’t listen.”

“They will not listen because you, sweetling, stomp your feet and huff like an eight year old girl.” Joanna put her cup on the table and raised her hand when her daughter opened her mouth. “You want to be taken serious? You must earn that. And it will be harder for you. It will be so much harder than it would be for a man, but that is life. I am not sure where you got the impression that it was supposed to be fair.” She straightened her sleeve, looking her daughter in the eyes. “Is it fair you were swaddled in silks and are doted on by servants whereas another girl will be born in a barn and has to sell herself for her siblings’ sake when she grows older?”

“What else is marrying me to someone so our family can be connected to the crown?”

“I take it you don’t like it, then? Fine. If it’s such a burden, then disguise yourself, cut your hair, sell your jewels and get on a ship to the Free Cities wearing leather armour. Even with your delicate features, you would make a passable Valyrian man.”

Cersei seemed shocked, but Joanna was not sorry. She had tried to reach her daughter with gentle words before, but apparently those would not get through. Her daughter leaned back in her chair.

“You have an easy time preaching, mother. You married a man you love.”

“Did I?”

Joanna gave her a small smile as Cersei frowned, trying to search her face for something that Joanna knew she would not find, her smile a perfect sunny disguise.

“But you…”

“I do love your father, but I haven’t always. You think my parents took my wishes into consideration when a chance arose to reunite with the main line? I had good fortune, but then again, you could say that you won the higher price – all of the Seven Kingdoms if you know how to take them.” Joanna grasped her daughter’s hand. “You are too transparent, sweetling. You might be right, it’s not fair, but if you dwell on it then you will spent your efforts nursing your grudge. Angry people make mistakes. You cannot afford that. If you want the might the crown on your head implies, you will have to make them believe in your smarts and strength – that you want to employ them for the good of the kingdom – until Arryn, Robert and all the others see you as their most trusted ally. Foolish people will tell you that you can control men with what is between your legs. Do not even think on that-“

“Why? Is that not pious?” Cersei asked, scathingly.

“No, but there is always a face prettier than yours someplace and in twenty years, your beauty will be faded like old tapestry. Besides, men are not as stupid as they might seem. If they realise you think you have to offer your body to get their attention, then your opinion will mean little.” Joanna’s smile became soft. “If you bothered to look at the hand you have been dealt, Cersei, you would see that it holds all the cards. You just need to play them smartly and I know you could. You are every part your father’s daughter.”

Cersei picked up her cup again, silent for once. Her fingers curled around her mother’s hand, almost like she was holding on for fear of something, and Joanna squeezed them gently like she had when Cersei was a young girl. She wasn’t, though, she was a woman, a queen and a Lannister and she would have to act the part.

*

“That was ill done. You should have talked to me.”

Joanna never raised her voice, but she found her fingers digging into her palms now as she stared at her husband. She had spent a few weeks with her sister, whose only son had been claimed by the war, and as she came back, the palace was filled with half-whispered stories of Tyrion’s short marriage and its very unfortunate ending.

“Was there any need to torture that girl so? She must have just been merely a vapid little thing.”

“The girl means nothing to me. It’s Tyrion who had to learn,” Tywin responded, looking at her over the table. She knew her disapproval shook him, but the deep-seated anger he felt for his youngest was greater.

“Do not try that with me, Tywin,” Joanna said as she walked to his side, holding his golden-flecked gaze the way she’d learnt she must. “I know you too well. You wanted to hurt him just as much as teach him.”

“Since when are you such a staunch defender of that little fool?” Tywin said, sailing past her accusation – not because he was afraid, Joanna suspected, but because he did not grace comments that were so evidently true with answers.

Joanna had to admit that with the trouble her twins produced by virtue of their unnatural relationship, she had hardly ever focused on Tyrion. He was mostly occupied with books, anyway. Unwanted, stashed by his father with the maester, he sat at home and watched his father move heaven and high water so that Jaime would get the Rock in the end, but was the safety net if it should be impossible to tear Jaime out of the Kingsguard.

“He is not going to stay a little boy, you know. He’ll grow.”

Tywin raised a brow.

“An inch or two, the maesters tell me, yes.”

Of course, he wanted to misunderstand her. Joanna straightened her shoulders. Tyrion had never become especially dear to her, but she could at least look at him with a fair eye. She’d seen he was clever. And now something different had shown itself, that something that gave a thirteen year old bookish cripple the braveness to take a girl by the hand and run. Desperation. Determination. Fight.

Before, she used to worry that Tyrion, if he’d ever have to take the Rock, would be a coward frightened into uselessness by his father, erased within the fortnight by relatives. Now, she wondered if Tywin’s constant pressure was not going to force the claws out of that pitiful little child – and that might not end well for any of them.

Joanna averted her eyes. She picked at a bunch of marigolds she always had the servants arrange in her quarters, letting the pause drag just long enough to give Tywin the illusion he might have won the argument.

“Imagine a sword to your throat, Mylord. Tywin. Tyrion or Kevan’s boys?” She then said, off-handedly.

“Are you asking who I favour?”

“I am tired of this game you play with our youngest,” Joanna said, smiling, looking at him over her shoulder. “It all seems very petty and immature to me. That has never been your way, Tywin. So I ask you, who should rather hold the Rock if it can’t be Jaime?”

Tywin thought on this a long moment.

“Kevan’s sons.”

Joanna nodded her head. “Then I have a proposition to make.”

*

Her son was wide-eyed when he faced her, pale, frightened, guilty. Joanna couldn’t really say whether it was because she was his parent or a woman. Tywin had locked him into his room, but she felt that he was retreating even further into himself than that, a stack of books around his bed like a fort. He looked very much the child he truly was despite a marriage in his past, so small and frail.

“Mylady?”

“Please sit, Tyrion.”

The boy drew up the wooden chair from the table where papers, more books and writing materials laid scattered, then noticed it was the only chair in the room and chose to pull himself up onto his bed instead. Joanna, however, put the chair back into its place and, moving a stack of books out of the way, sat down next to her boy.

“I heard about what happened in my absence.”

“I regret my actions deeply, mother,” Tyrion said, hastily stumbling over his own words.

“I have no doubt.”

Joanna smiled at him, but it did nothing to calm the boy. His gaze flitted to the window, almost wistfully. She wondered if he was thinking about his little wife or if it wouldn’t have mattered at all where he went if it was just away from the Rock.

“Are you happy here, Tyrion?”

“Yes, mother. Of course,” he droned, looking at the wall again.

“That wasn’t very convincing.”

Tyrion just stared straight ahead.

“I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize for not being happy. No one would be. But you must learn to lie in a way that people believe.”

His misshaped head turned to look at her, attention roused. She gently took him by the chin.

“You will never hold a sword to defend yourself, so you must learn to fight in other ways, like women do. Don’t let me know I can hurt you, people will always use that against you. Now tell me again.”

Tyrion stared at her as if she’d gone mad, but he composed himself.

“I am very happy here, mother,” he said with a smile.

“Much better.” She released him. “You will have to practice that. But I know that you don’t like it here. Perhaps your father has been cold…”

“My Lord Father hates me,” Tyrion said, unflinching. It wasn’t an accusation, just a fact, and Joanna closed her mouth as she was about to spill some standard denial. This little boy was not Joanna’s sister and her dainty maids and at least one certain night in the barracks beyond such coddling.

“Would you like to go someplace else, then?”

Tyrion frowned. “Where? No one would foster me.”

“It’s more than that. I would give you to the Citadel so you can forge your chain.”

For the first time, she felt like she was truly getting at Tyrion. He visibly opened, turning to her as he folded one short leg under his body.

“You could serve us indirectly as a maester,” Joanna continued. “I am not sure you have a chance to gain the position of Grand Maester, though it depends on how you fare – your heritage certainly is clean and we will see if you can elevate yourself above your height. In any case, a man in a different noble house would be a pretty thing to have for us. There is perhaps a way to let you gain a position close to court so you can keep an eye on your siblings.”

“Oh, yes. They… yes.”

Joanna’s eyes widened. Something about his tone…

“They what?”

“They are at court,” Tyrion said, a little too quickly.

Joanna stared.

“You know, don’t you? How?”

Obviously fighting with himself, the boy faltered under her steady gaze eventually.

“Jaime told me.”

To hear that was enough to make any mother despair. Joanna rubbed her forehead with her knuckles.

“How could he just _tell_ you that?”

“Aside from Cersei, I don’t think he talks to anyone the way he does to me,” Tyrion said, almost soothing.

Joanna looked at her son, who carefully lifted his eyes to meet hers, pulling his red tunic over his misshapen thighs. He looked a boy, but the words were smarter than that. It was true that Jaime, who never used his head more than he needed to, had always been inexplicably in love with his little brother. Indeed, his whole world seemed to need no more than two people, when it came down to the very basis.

“As a maester, you will have to hide your loyalties. You won’t see Jaime for a long time when you forge your chain.”

“I know. I will find a way to write him letters. Sometimes he writes back. Mostly not, but I know he always reads them… eventually.”

He smiled warmly and it made Joanna smile as well.

“You won’t get Casterly Rock if you are a maester.”

“Father says Jaime will have the Rock. And I don’t want to ever again… I want to be alone.”

It would have been Tywin’s way to tell him that they’d have found no noble bride for him either way, but Joanna skipped that part and just nodded her head.

“I won’t be a Lannister anymore,” Tyrion said and at least that didn’t sound all glad yet.

“You won’t wear the name and people will certainly torment you with the knowledge that you lack that shield. But you will always be a Lannister, even if your father doesn’t like to hear it.”

It was the first time anyone told him, she could easily guess.

“If you do your tasks well, you will be a much greater help to us than you ever could be wasting away in these walls.” Pausing, she smiled and gave an easy shrug. “Of course, your Lord father does not believe me. He thinks you will crumble. I suppose most people do, looking at you…”

The boy straightened, eyes wide, seeing his chance slip away. “He is wrong.”

“Is that so?”

Tyrion slid from the bed and faced her, troubled, angry, as desperate to run as he was for her approval.

“Yes. I will do as you say, mother. Please let me go to the Citadel.”

His face was animate in the light of the torches. He looked so much like his siblings, she realised, he really did. There was Cersei’s cold cunning in his mean, mismatched eyes. There was also Jaime’s need to love and be loved, trampled to the ground yet still alive, as he flexed and unflexed his little fists, nervous and rigid under his mother’s gaze, not lowering his eyes. Proud, unyielding lion’s blood. She loved him for the first time that moment.

***

“How do you like the North, mother?”

Tyrion tugged at his chain, which was ice cold against his skin. Overnight, fresh snow had fallen which reached to his knees as he walked the courtyard now (not alltogether a great height, considering, but he had to strain to keep up with his mother’s long, measured steps).

“Pleasant for wolves.” His mother’s face was somewhat worn with wrinkles and white hairs were threading through the gold, but she still looked very pleasant when she smiled, softened by age in a way that had exactly nothing to do with what Tyrion knew laid behind her forehead. “What about you, Maester Tyrion?”

“After nine years in Oldtown, I thought King’s Landing was cold. Eddard Stark is frostier.” When Tyrion had finished his chain with just twenty-two years of age, he had been assigned to Seaside Hall, a small lord’s castle by King’s Landing, through the influence of Grand Maester Pycelle. There was a letter of his mother buried somewhere in that big beard of his, Tyrion knew.

This early in the morning, Tyrion’s lord was drunk asleep somewhere in the Winterfell castle. The young, unmarried dullard knight who owned Seaside Hall had aspirations at court and was in the palm of Tyrion’s hand by the end of his first month of serving. When the Lord of Seaside Hall planned to travel with Robert to retrieve the new Hand, he had all but insisted Tyrion came along.

Of course, Tyrion’s presence was hardly needed. Tywin had sent his own most effective spy.

“Will the South melt him, you think?” His mother asked.

“As much as it could a piece of these stone walls.”

Joanna gave a nod and Tyrion realised he’d been tested. He didn’t mind anymore. His mother was neither benevolent nor very kind and her love for him was likely quite conditional. However, it was attainable. His father had the same defect all his children carried, loving someone just a little bit too much to forgive ill done to that person, and Tyrion had hurt his beloved wife as he came into the world. Joanna had always been more practical. A brilliant player never let a good piece on the board go to waste because she didn’t quite like it.

From the practice yard, voices sounded. Joanna and Tyrion turned a corner and happened upon Jaime surrounded by a few Winterfell guards. As Joanna approached, they bowed deep and Jaime nodded his head, one gloved hand brushing fondly over Tyrion’s shoulder when he came to stand next to him.

“Are you preparing for the hunt?” Joanna asked, smiling brightly.

“Your son does not want to participate, Mylady,” one of the guards informed her.

“I thought all men would go?”

“There’s children and women here who need safekeeping. The king’s family is under my guard as well, as you know.” Jaime grinned at them as he stood on his little edge over the proverbial abyss and Tyrion found himself taken aback by his brashness, secretly impressed by how good a deceiver his sister had to be to make up for behaviour like this. His mother, however, never missed a beat.

“My son is a great hunter. He must absolutely go. We shall be just fine behind these thick walls, but the hunt is dangerous.”

“And the King will be just fine with a hundred men around him,” Jaime gave back.

Joanna chuckled, her voice light and joking. “Well, with that many arrows buzzing about, all the more reason for you to be with the King, no?”

There was a brief moment in which she held his gaze, her green eyes hard like emeralds. Finally, Jaime snorted and gave a wave of his hand.

“My good guards, you heard the Lady. What man would deny the will of his mother? I shall need my horse, then.”

They walked off, Jaime throwing a displeased gaze back over his shoulder. Joanna still smiled as she turned to Tyrion.

“Do excuse me, Maester Tyrion. I think I will visit my daughter’s quarters. I need to have a word with her.”

Tyrion smiled the way she’d taught him to.

“Sometimes, I don’t know what we’d do without you, mother.”


End file.
